The Way From Eden
by geriatricfool
Summary: Spock Prime reflects on some of the implications of his sending Kirk to goad Spock into revealing his feelings. References to the episode This Side of Paradise, and this story would make most sense if you know that episode too.


THE WAY FROM EDEN

"Live long and prosper."

He had said that, and watched the beaming fade.

He assumed, had assumed when he had urged the young Kirk to push his own younger self to beyond breaking point, that there would be people there to make sure there would be no fatalities. He had forgotten to warn Kirk of that. Do it when there are others around.

Of course, he would do that. Spock's precarious emotional state would have to be demonstrable.

He drew in a deep and nearly shuddering breath, and let it out in a long slow sigh.

How typical of those Humans. A man could lose his mother, could watch his planet, could watch everyone he had ever known and …..

Too long with those Humans. He caught himself before the phrase concluded.

….could watch everyone he had ever known and associated with, die, could watch everywhere he had known, every remote scorched desert hiding place he had gloried in, every house he had rested in, every building he had worked in, studied in, done business in, every garden he had walked in, played in…..

Gone.

These Humans, they could not, or would not, draw the inference that indescribable pain would ensue, not without the evidence of their ears or eyes. They had to see it demonstrated. They had to see weeping, wailing, collapse, emotional disintegration – then they would believe. And thus he had sent in the young Kirk to goad, to provoke, to torture his young self into just that emotional disintegration.

Guilt. He had always denied the experience of emotion, and guilt was an emotion. "I am a Vulcan. Vulcans do not feel guilt…."

In a pig's eye!

Even through pain which would have made a Human groan, the echo of his long ago sparring partner and friend caressed his heart and could have made him smile. Spock felt strangely steadied; accompanied. Understood. He did know guilt. And now he did feel guilty. He knew his young self's pain; it was his own. He knew what it would be like to be goaded, provoked, tortured, by Kirk. Because it had happened to him.

"The Vulcan never lived who had an ounce of integrity.

"What can you expect from a simpering, devil-eared freak….."

"And you had the gall to make love to that girl."

Yes, he had. He had had the gall.

The grass was cool, shaded under the tree, but not damp. Soft and springy. Even in the midst of the passion and far-away space to which the pleasure had taken him, he had worried that her soft pale skin might be hurt, chafed, grazed as he lay over her, supported only on one elbow. His other hand moved from its curve around her hip and pressed against the grass next to her head. "What….what are you…..?" She gasped, abandoned the question, but he understood.

"I do not wish to hurt you…to….are you alright on the grass?"

It sounded ludicrous, to both their ears, and they both sank into laughter; her arms tightened around his back and hugged him closer and his face buried in her neck as he kissed and nuzzled her scented skin.

"Leila…."

"Spock…" Again, her words were swallowed in a gasp. He sank, deeper into her, deeper into her softness, deeper into her body, deeper into her mind. He groaned.

Kirk had taken it away. Not at that moment of course. No-one else was there then. No-one saw them, nor saw them afterwards slip stealthily into the stores to steal, not her word though it was his, a coverall for him after his shirt was torn. By her. She had been as impatient as he and fresh clothing was urgently required. As he had fumbled in his uncaringly clumsy attempts to unfold and undo and sort out the unaccustomed clothing, they had laughed, and hugged, and clung together in joy.

Kirk took it all away because he had decided that paradise was an ephemeral business and had no truck with it. It was fine to visit for a while but no-one had the right to stay there. His friend James T Kirk had made quite a career out of evicting this civilisation or that group of people from their own placid form of complete happiness.

"For the first time in my life, I was happy."

Spock eased his long gaunt form down onto the seat recently vacated by Mr Scott, and he stared, Human fashion and unseeing, into the tribble's cage. "The needs of the many…." But in the past, it had been only his own needs he sacrificed, for the good of the many. He had never taken it upon himself to sacrifice the needs of another, before now.

Spock prodded gently at the cooing furry tribble, a grey eyebrow on the rise, and a brief and bitter chuckle escaped him as he reflected that in fact that principle remained unbroken. After all, who was the young Spock, if not himself? And he had set that young blood, that terrier of righteousness, on to the bastion of naivety and innocence that he himself had once been.

To be sure, it was no Paradise that young Kirk was wresting him from. There were no spores on Enterprise, no breezy and open blue sky, no beautiful, pale and dreamlike lover. There was instead a horror beyond expression, the blackest of nightmares and an unfathomable gulf of grief. Yet -

The young Spock was buoyed, protected, bourn through by his unshakable faith in his own immovable Vulcan-ness. Emotions and pain are of the mind. They can be controlled. The agony can be and has been compartmentalized. Not since that long ago school battle and that long ago incomprehensible yet steadying conversation with his father had he deviated from the Image, from the Vulcan path. The Image was always there for him; his beacon, his guide, his armour and his strength.

Kirk was on his way again, to shatter it.

Spock stared at his clasped hands in his own lap, and shook his head slightly, and sighed.

Some things never changed.

END


End file.
